Starting off with a quick role play, the interviewer Bill Rojas from SAP Digital, put himself into the position of one of In Mind Cloud's potential customers.

"I imagine myself as the CEO of a manufacturing business for a day. I’ve barely had my first cup of coffee without being deeply in thought about the massive challenges this industry is currently facing.

From the pressure to move to a smart and completely automated factory to strong globalized competition – steering such a business to future success is no piece of cake. Regardless of the tremendous complexities that lie in the business model itself, my customers are nowadays demanding individually, accurately configured solutions presented to them in a perfect quote at the lowest possible price. Before dawn."

He quickly ended this imaginary mine field and turned to Christian, In Mind Cloud's CEO to get an idea on how manufacturing business owners got themselves into this situation.

“Our market environment clearly is fast-growing, but constantly changing. Manufacturers are challenged by the next major evolution of their business, Industry 4.0. Their end customers now expect the buying experience of ‘lot-size one,’ at the cost benefit of mass production. And we are right in the middle, since digitizing the sales process is a very real and successful response to this challenge,” Christian stated.

With the clear objective to help manufacturing companies stay ahead in the next industrial wave, Christian explained how real-time sales simulation capabilities and new integration with SAP S/4HANA will further enhance In Mind Cloud's solution. Built on the SAP Cloud Platform with its vast integration and innovation capabilities, using mobile and UI frameworks, the SAP HANA database, and AI technologies, In Mind Cloud is well equipped to define a roadmap that captures crucial requirements of their customers.

"We focus on real-life industrial sales problems beyond the usual CPQ scope, like managing the price decay of manufacturing contracts after the sell, or using geospatial data to pre-fill 80 percent of a quote. But this is just an example of what our sales platform is capable of," says the CEO of the independent SaaS provider.

So what's next for In Mind Cloud? Focusing on a regional strategy, the company is following market dynamics of the manufacturing world.

“Asia and China are soaring! With our headquarters, marketing and engineering teams in Singapore, we are in a perfect spot to serve the Asian market, while we maintain our close relationship to Europe as the manufacturing powerhouse – and the headquarters of our partner SAP through our German office and cultural roots. Our new office in China will mark another important milestone in our expansion. Together with our new representatives in Taiwan and Indonesia, we have set a clear growth path for 2018 and beyond.”

For the full story and interview please visit sap.com and the SAP Blog. Find In Mind Cloud's CPQ for SAP on SAP's digital marketplace, the SAP App Center.